Wednesday, November 30, 2005

Have recently finished reading a book titled "Cracking the Bible Code". This is certainly a book that I would recommend to anyone who has heard about / wants to know more about the code phenomenon.

The book is written from a Jewish perspective with a healthy dose of statistics and cryptology thrown in for good measure.

The book is very readable and I enjoyed it precisely because the author is exceptionally clear on what the codes are about, how they have been uncovered and how they have been misapplied by well meaning but ill informed enthusiasts.

The graphic above is entitled Dream Weave. It has nothing to do with the book reviewed above.

Am grateful for the fact that at work today I got paid to watch videos with my students. Sometimes life is very, very good.

Tuesday, November 29, 2005

Went to the Johnny Clegg concert tonight and it was great. The music was wonderful and the atmosphere was amazing. The stories behind some of the songs was fascinating and the entire evening was very special and worthwhile.

Today I am grateful for my really awesome friend. She is kind, caring, compassionate and fun to be with. She know who she is! Thanks for a great night.

Saturday, November 26, 2005

The title of this post does not refer to the movie but rather to the fact that, according to recent news reports, the All Blacks may end up playing their test match against Scotland wearing training tights. This is due to the freezing temperatures / snow that are currently a feature in Edinburgh.

The funny thing is how this piece of information made the news headlines over here. This country is seriously nuts about rugby. Sometimes I feel very out of place as I am not a fan and could not care less about the game. Having said that, I still want the All Blacks to win. I am a Kiwi after all.

If you use your imagination, the above could be an over decorated rugby ball heading toward the viewer at top speed. Note that rugby balls are not round, but are oval shaped. I have no idea why this is.

Wednesday, November 23, 2005

I have heard it said that statistics is when you torture numbers until they confess to anything. Bearing this in mind, I keep statistics on this blog and was really surprised to see a major "spike". Overall my number of visitors per day (based entirely on cookies) is fairly constant. Today was not different. Only somone out there must have really liked what they saw as they hang around and visited most of the pages on this blog. I can tell because my number of hits today shot up to a record 385 when it is usually around 95. Weird.

The graphic above was created with Mind Boggling Fractals and edited in Paintshop Pro. I played around with the brightness and contrast first. Then I used the "Gamma Correction" feature to change and got the graphic you see above.

Monday, November 21, 2005

Had a quiet day today. It involved doing laundry, going for a walk and tutoring two students. I am hoping that there is more to life than this. The pessimist in me says that today was actually good. It could have been a lot worse.

The image above was created with Apophysis and is titled "Twisted Twighlight".

Saturday, November 19, 2005

*If you came for the artwork, simply scroll down. Its under the story.

This post is dedicated to my dad and my dad's dad (my late grandfather). Its for my dad because he washed and waxed my car for me this morning. I did not ask him to do it. Its his way of "saying" that he loves me.

Had to tutor this morning so I drove to my student's house in my pristine, better than new car. Did not even make it to the motorway when a seagull decided to use my newly washed car for target practice. Most of the 'missile' missed, but not all of it. So my beautiful clean car was no longer beautiful and clean.

I could almost hear my grandfather say "for others they sing". Hence the dedication.

Needless to say dad noticed that my car was no longer beautiful and pristine when I returned home. My dad is a bit like "Sherlock Holmes". He notices EVERYTHING!!! We laughed about it. After all, short of using seagulls for target practice, what else can you do?

Graphic above is called "Wrapped Diamond". It is designed to take one's mind off the desire to shoot seagulls.

Saturday, November 12, 2005

First of all, a big thanks to those who commented on my "Distortion" piece. The encouragement is deeply appreciated.

Today's offering is called "Intution". Often people ask how I get my textured effects and it is really hard to explain, mostly because it is a matter of trial and error and learning to predict when a flame can be "played with" to get an interesting effect. In short, some days its all down to intuition.

Thursday, November 10, 2005

Used Context Free to create the image below. It took me about three days to figure out how to do it.

Those of you who are observant, will notice that this image is an electronic version of my "avatar" (top LHS of this blog). The original version was first drawn by hand and then stitched using a needle, thread and dark cardboard.

Monday, November 07, 2005

This week is going to be as busy as last week. I can't believe it! Was thinking things would calm down abruptly but they have not. Am already booked all the way through to Friday and my private students are still stressing about their forthcoming exams.

Today's flame was a test done several weeks ago to see if the latest Beta version of Apophysis worked as expected. It did :)

Friday, November 04, 2005

Am more grateful than usual that the weekend is upon us. This week has probably been my busiest on record. I would have posted a graphic last night but for some reason, when I finally got round to it, flickr, gmail and blogger were all "down". Guess the universe was telling me to take a break and get to sleep.